Iconography
by Trick Blue
Summary: Sakura's eyes wandered over page after page, searching for an image he had never created.


Disclaimer: _Naruto_ and all characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. I do not profit financially from this work.

Pepto-Bismol is the trademark and product of Procter and Gamble.

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Iconography

by Trick Blue

Sakura was the only teammate Sai had ever known to take an active interest in his artwork since his brother had passed away. It was strange, he thought, that his talent should become the focal point of their relationship, especially when whatever relationship they did have was still so difficult to define. But he was curious to know the unfamiliar concepts her friendship presented, and he allowed her to follow him around the village from time to time. Those books he read had said that spending time together was a good way to practice bonding, after all.

After the first couple of bonding sessions, however, Sai realized that he must have been going about this thing the wrong way. Verbal exchanges with kunoichi, Sakura in particular, often proved detrimental to his health. When he received his third punch in one day, he decided that the less he said about her hair and how it reminded him of Pepto-Bismol and nausea, the better off he would be.

He brought his sketchbook along the next time they met, and this had the remarkable effect of silencing Sakura for a good length of time. She liked to watch him draw, she admitted, because there was an honesty in his face that she had only seen before when he was sketching. From then on, Sai never left home without his art supplies.

Sometimes she smiled over his shoulder as he sketched the children at the playground, watching his brush strokes make long black lines that would curve into arms and legs or capture long hair flashing in the sunlight. It made him feel funny when she smiled that way; his heart would beat a little too quickly, or his fingers would tremble ever so slightly. One book had described these symptoms as signs of nervousness. As he steadied his hand and tried to shake the dizzy feeling from his head, Sai wondered just what it was about her that he should be nervous about.

There were other times when she watched him work, and other places, too: battlegrounds in the early morning, the blood of victors and vanquished alike soaking into the ground, like the red wine she'd secretly confessed to spilling once on her mother's good tablecloth; funeral pyres that leaked billows of smoke into the sky. She wouldn't smile in these instances, and to ask her why she didn't would result in a flash of one emotion across her face that would quickly melt into another. Sai recognized the first as anger; the second, he later learned, was sadness.

* * *

The first time Sakura visited his apartment she had shown up with a box of sweets from her mother's shop and stood in the center of his living room just to marvel at his works. Paintings and sketches and drawings half-finished covered every inch of wall, spilled onto counter tops and the kitchen table; even the floor failed to be exempt from functioning as storage space, where piles of sketchbooks lined the walls. The children from the playground were there alongside the blood-soaked fields and the funeral pyres. 

She spent hours asking him questions that floated in the calm of the evening and filled the quiet moments between them. Who were these people, and where had he seen those mountain ranges? Why did he paint dragons that breathed under water and tigers that lived in the clouds? He answered her queries with stories of faraway countries and months-long missions, hearing the pulse of a different question beneath all the others and puzzling as to why she just didn't ask it outright.

Meanwhile Sakura's eyes wandered over page after page, searching for an image he had never created. Her lips had moved unknowingly in those moments and shaped the silent name of a boy Sai had never known. Each time she came and went unsatisfied, leaving behind the memory of glassy eyes and false smiles to haunt him in the dark hours of the night. As he grew to feel resentment toward the name and the face that Sakura could not forget, Sai learned first what it was like to feel jealousy.

It was on her twelfth visit that Sakura realized she had searched every piece of paper in his apartment and met the painful jab of disappointment at each turn. Sai watched on as she sat down in the only chair that stood free of painted scrolls and brushes. She stared at the opposite wall, littered with the faces of people she would never see.

"Sasuke-kun. I had hoped…" Her voice wavered. "You never sketched him."

"No, I didn't," Sai replied.

She turned her face toward him, eyes shining in the dimming light. Her jaw clenched tight as she struggled to maintain her composure, tear-streaked cheeks belying the forced effort.

"Would you draw him?" She dug her hand into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "I have his picture. If I asked you, if I paid you to do it. Would you paint him for me?"

She reached out to him, fingertips grasping at his wrist and pulling him closer. The strength of her grip and the pain in her eyes surprised him. His blood began to boil in an unfamiliar manner, and he had this strong compulsion to pull her into his arms and embrace her. But that would have been inappropriate; a strange man should never try to embrace a woman, especially if she was upset. He was silent for a long time but never broke eye contact.

"I can't," he finally replied. "You're looking for something that I can't paint."

* * *

_To Sakura-chan on her Birthday._

_Love, Naruto._

Sakura stared at the envelope on her kitchen counter. Naruto had sent her a pair of pearl earrings this year. They were fresh from the sea and expensive, newly polished but still smelling of salt. She wondered where Naruto was right now. Did he think of her often? Or was he like Sakura, his mind never wandering far from Sasuke?

The door bell rang. Outside, a flash of lightning split the black sky in two, and the rain streaked down the window panes. Even as she wondered who would be crazy enough to wander out in such weather, Sakura smiled. The door handle turned easily beneath her fingers. The door pulled back just as easily, leaving Sai standing in its frame. The smile evaporated from her face.

He wore no raincoat and brought no umbrella; water dripped from the fabric of his clothes, the tip of his nose. Already there was a puddle forming beneath his feet. A plastic bag hung from the crook of his right elbow.

"It's polite to invite your guest inside," he said. He brushed away the bangs that stuck to his forehead.

Sakura folded her arms against herself and settled her eyes on a crack in the hallway wall. She asked, "Should I treat you as a guest?" When Sai didn't reply, she closed the door in his face.

He heard the door creak open twenty-seven seconds later as he was wandering back down the hallway he had come. She stood in a house robe and slippers, a bundle of towels cradled in her arms, and beckoned for him come inside. She opened up one of the towels, starkly white from constant washing in bleach, and settled it around his shoulders. This woman, small and slight and prone to emotional outbursts, bewildered him as no one else did.

"Okay," she said, "I've invited you inside. Now what do you want?"

Sai took another towel and dried the outside of the plastic bag, then his hands. The material crinkled as he opened it up and removed a flat package wrapped in a rich red cloth. He held it out to Sakura.

She stared at it. "What is this?"

Sai's eyes widened in confusion. "It's a present. Isn't today your birthday?"

Sakura nodded, taking the gift from his hands.

"Is it not appropriate to give gifts to a friend on his or her birthday?" Sai frowned, contemplating whether he had misunderstood the chapter on gift-giving in his latest book.

"It may be appropriate," Sakura replied. She tugged carefully at the soft wrapping and tried to keep from wrinkling it. The fabric fell away and revealed a sketchbook. She flipped through the blank pages; each piece of paper was thick and heavy between her fingers.

When she looked up, Sai was holding a vial of black ink in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. "I told you that I can't paint the picture that you want," he said. "You'll have to paint it yourself."

The pretense of anger flashed across her face, furrowing her brow and moving her lips into a frown. But like those days in the battlefields and at the funeral ceremonies, the furious emotion quickly gave way to a sadness that seemed to surround her.

She sat down at her kitchen table built for two people and sometimes used by three. Sai set the vial down on its surface, the chink of glass on metal ringing through his fingers. He held the brush out to Sakura and she took it in a trembling hand. Her nails were painted the color of the ocean.

Sakura dipped the brush into the ink and watched the dark liquid saturate the soft tan bristles. It was the kind of ink that would stain her skin for weeks and leave the paintbrush permanently black. Sai had once held his hands up as a testament to its potency; even after a month the tips of his finger had still been discolored, the creases in his palms outlined in a dull gray.

She lifted brush from the ink and brought it toward the book. The point of brush hovered uncertainly over the paper. Beads of black trickled drown the bristles and congregated at its tip, threatening to spill onto the sheet. Sakura watched the first drip fall, then another, and still another. Each drop bloomed upon impact, bursting into stars and lines and then sinking deeply into the page.

When she finally pulled the brush away the ivory paper was ruined. Every sheet in the sketchbook was marked with a black stain that would never wash away.

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Thanks for reading.

_Trick Blue_


End file.
